6235 - Pottner, Emil

Pottner, Emil Flower Still Life with Blue and Yellow Irises. Oil on canvas. 66 x 52 cm. Signed “E. Pottner” lower right; inscribed on the reverse (in his own hand?) “E. Pottner / Iris” and labeled with the number “740.” Emil Pottner was born in Salzburg to a Jewish family of actors and began studying at the Munich Academy in 1891, though he completed his studies at the Academy in Berlin. Beginning in 1904, he was a member of the Berlin Secession and soon became part of Max Liebermann’s inner circle. Within the Secession, he was regarded, alongside Struck, Spiro, and others, as a true exponent of Impressionist principles. Pottner was active primarily as a painter, graphic artist, and ceramicist, and commuted between his ceramics studio in Berlin-Charlottenburg and his country house in Petzow on the Havel River near Potsdam. After the Nazis had already imposed a ban on his work in 1933, he was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and was presumably subsequently murdered at the Maly Trostinez extermination camp near Minsk. As a result, his biography and his work fell into obscurity for decades. - We ask that you request condition reports for the lots, as the condition is listed in the catalog only in exceptional cases. - Please ask for condition reports for individual lots, as the condition is usually not mentioned in the catalog.